Pubdate: Tue, 14 Dec 2004
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Stephen Moss
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)

TRIP OVER?

Magic Mushrooms Have Never Been More Popular. More Than 400 Apparently 
Legal 'shroom' Shops Have Sprung Up In The Past Two Years, And Growing Kits 
Have Become A Must-have Christmas Present. So Why Has The Government 
Suddenly Turned Tough On Sellers? Stephen Moss Investigates.

Six months ago, when the NME described 2004 as "the third summer of love", 
it put the benign mood down to one thing - the return of magic mushrooms. 
The drug idolised by cult author and psychologist Timothy Leary in the 
1960s - he said that his first experience of mushrooms in Mexico in 1960 
taught him more than all his years of study - was back. According to the 
NME, which produced a "top tips for top trips" guide, mushrooms were a safe 
alternative to ecstasy, and what's more - they were legal. It was time to 
"turn on, tune in, drop out" all over again.

Except that nobody told the Home Office and the police, which have now 
declared war on magic mushrooms. In Gloucester, two local men have been 
charged with supplying a class A drug by selling them. It promises to be 
the start of a long and complicated legal battle to determine the status of 
Britain's latest drug of choice. Other cases are pending in Birmingham and 
Canterbury - cases which the Home Office hopes will establish once and for 
all whether magic mushrooms are innocent, hippy-dippy playthings, or a 
menace to be stamped on.

The nation's mushroom sellers are confused. Two years ago, a more 
easy-going Home Office sent out a letter advising them that "the growing of 
psilocybe mushrooms" and their "gathering and possession" did not 
contravene the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It was not illegal, the letter 
went on, to sell or give away a growing kit, or to sell or give away a 
freshly picked mushroom, "provided that it has not been prepared in any 
way". Recipients of the letter took it as a green light to sell fresh 
mushrooms, and there are now an estimated 400 "shroom" shops in the UK.

This distinction - between a fresh mushroom and one that has been 
"prepared" - is crucial. It is not an offence to possess or consume a 
mushroom, because it occurs naturally, but a psilocybe mushroom contains 
the hallucinogen psilocin and its byproduct psilocybin, both of which are 
deemed to be class A drugs under the 1971 Act. Any "preparation" or any 
attempt to turn the mushroom into a "product" (the Gloucester case and 
others like it may hinge on the definition of those words) could constitute 
the supply of a class A drug. Maximum sentence: life imprisonment.

The Home Office has now, in effect, disowned the original softly-softly 
guidance note. "The Home Office judges that a mushroom that has been 
cultivated, transported to the marketplace, packaged, weighed and labelled 
constitutes a product," reads the latest guidelines. Applied literally, 
this would appear to rule out all trade in magic mushrooms, which at 
present are being cultivated, transported, weighed and sold openly in shops 
and on market stalls all over the country. Even grow-kits, which allow you 
to grow your own mushrooms, appear to be ruled out under the Home Office 
advice - a grow-kit, by definition, means cultivation. The tougher 
guidelines have led to a rash of arrests across the country, and to cases 
that will determine whether the nascent industry has a future

One retailer caught in the police crackdown was Andy Burgess, who runs the 
Headz "alternative gift shop" in Folkestone. Burgess, a former builder, is 
61 and admits to being "the oldest swinger in town". His shop, with its 
blue and purple frontage, is an exotic exception to the drabness of the 
rest of the town. It smells of incense, has a large reclining Buddha in the 
window and is plastered with leaflets for psychic fayres, spiritual healing 
and medieval fencing. Strangely, there is also an advertisement for a model 
railway exhibition.

In late September, Burgess had a visit from the local police - and they 
hadn't come for the Indian head massage. "When I arrived here in the 
morning, there were two police vans outside my door," he recalls. "I said 
to a policeman, 'Do you want to speak to me?' He said, 'I'm afraid so.' 
There were at least eight policemen - they were like a Swat team.

"I said, 'What do you want?' He said, 'I want your mushrooms. Where are 
they?' They ended up taking my fridge, all my invoices, all my 
paraphernalia regarding mushroom selling."

Burgess was arrested on suspicion of supplying a class A drug and spent the 
rest of the day in the cells. He was interviewed, then bailed, but a few 
days later he was told that the case had been dropped. No explanation or 
apology was offered. "I can't understand it," he says. "I can't understand 
why they're hassling people." He also sells a range of replica firearms in 
his shop, but these do not seem to have excited the interest of the police.

Burgess has been selling magic mushrooms for seven or eight months to a 
wide range of aficionados: "I get teachers, even policemen coming in to buy 
them," he says. "Most people don't buy them in large quantities; they buy a 
small amount and share them with their friends to have a giggle. I sell 
them in 30g bags, which is the maximum dose for any one person, but if you 
do half of it you just get a giggle. Things may look a bit surreal, but 
that's as far as it goes. It's quite harmless."

Not everyone agrees. "Magic mushrooms are potentially dangerous," insists 
Professor John Henry, an expert in toxicology at Imperial College and St 
Mary's Hospital, London. "They clearly cause hallucinations. The 
hallucinations are usually short term, but there is a danger of 
flashbacks." Professor Henry says mushrooms have contributed to several 
deaths, with people suffering hallucinations being killed in accidents. "I 
advise people never to take magic mushrooms as a form of escape. I tell 
them your hang-ups will always chase you. Experienced users might just feel 
a bit trippy, but naive users may feel sick, spacy, quite ill. It is also 
frightening if they are fed to you without you knowing. That can be very 
scary."

Mushroom sellers, unsurprisingly, refuse to accept that mushrooms can do 
long-term damage. Psyche Deli, one of the biggest companies in the 
industry, was started by three people who enjoyed taking mushrooms and 
decided to turn their hobby into a business. They quote a Dutch scientific 
report that claims mushrooms are safe. "We never set out to do anything 
illegal," says co-founder Paul Galbraith. "We asked all the requisite 
authorities what we were able to do, and it looks like many other traders 
did the same. Over the past two years, although nothing has actually 
changed in the law, the Home Office's interpretation appears to have 
changed." Chris Territt, also from Psyche Deli, argues that it may be the 
increased size and organisation of the business - the Home Office is 
especially exercised by the growing volume of imports, mainly from Holland 
- - that has triggered the clampdown.

"The law on magic mushrooms is madness," says Paul Flynn, Labour MP for 
Newport West. "It seems to have been written by somebody who was on a 
hallucinogenic drug." In May, Flynn wrote to Home Office minister Caroline 
Flint asking for clarification. Her reply - that the very act of selling 
them constitutes "preparation" - showed how far the Home Office had moved 
away from its original view that "preparation" meant a change in the 
physical nature of the mushroom, turning it into a tea, a paste or a 
powder, for example, to make the effect of the psilocin more concentrated.

The change of heart does not, however, appear to have penetrated the 
Metropolitan police, which has so far taken no action in London, where 
magic mushrooms are sold openly in street markets. When I visited a stall 
in Portobello Road, business was fairly brisk, with family groups clustered 
round the stall choosing from among the mushroom varieties - Mexican, 
Colombian, Hawaiian, Thai. Christmas is a busy time, apparently, with 
grow-kits rivalling iPods as the must-have present last year.

Flynn is scathing about the government's handling of the issue. "It's 
crazy: if you pick them, that's legal; if you keep them overnight, that's 
illegal because they dry out. The effect of magic mushrooms is minor 
compared with other drugs. There is a market for them and it would be 
better to allow it to operate. There are plenty of medicinal drugs that 
cause far more damage than magic mushrooms. But there are no signs of any 
intelligence in drug policy from the government. When they say the word 
'drugs', you can be sure that the word 'tough' won't be far behind."

Even Professor Henry, while backing a ban on their cultivation, believes 
the law has become hopelessly confused. "They're not a food - VAT has to be 
paid on them - so what are they? They're in some other category, but nobody 
seems to know what."

The VAT issue is vexing to mushroom retailers. In February, one wrote to 
Customs and Excise to ask whether he should be charging VAT. It replied 
that he should and was then embarrassed when the retailer made the letter 
public. It appeared that it was levying a tax on a "product" which the Home 
Office wanted to ban. Joined-up government it wasn't.

"We did state that fresh mushrooms were subject to VAT," says Customs and 
Excise spokesman Paul Matthews, "but we are also aware of the Home Office 
view that their packaging for sale is illegal. We are really waiting for 
case law on this." Mushroom retailers argue that if VAT is being levied, 
the product per se cannot be illegal; it seems this is not the case. "Just 
because something is illegal doesn't mean that it can't be taxed," says 
Matthews.

Proponents of magic mushrooms are frustrated at what they see as the Home 
Office's reluctance to consider changing the law, and are critical of a 
policy that appears to be based on nudging the police and the courts to 
establish precedent. "If someone was going to make policy on this, then 
there would at least be a debate," says Territt, "but currently there is no 
debate. The crown prosecution service is not a relevant authority to be 
making health and safety and drugs policy." 
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